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Black Templars
The Black Templars are a Loyalist First Founding Space Marine Legion. Born as the XVI Legion on Terra, they would first rise to greatness under the name of the Luna Wolves. Before the dark days of the Dornian Heresy they fought at the Emperor's side on Terra and through the early years of the Great Crusade. The XVI Legion was loyal beyond question, and their master was lauded above all others. They exemplified what an Astartes was supposed to be; brutal, ruthless and unwavering but also honourable, and were considered the most favoured servants of the Emperor of Mankind. In honour of Horus' great achievements during the Great Crusade, following the Imperial victory over the Orks during the Ullanor Crusade, the Emperor suggested that the Legion be renamed the Sons of Horus. Horus was also granted the title 'Warmaster', commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies. The history of the Black Templars is the history of the ambition of the Imperium itself, and the flaws that broke its founder's dreams of unification and glory for all Mankind asunder. The tragic events of the Dornian Heresy saw their Primarch Horus slain and the Emperor mortally wounded at the hands of the Arch-Betrayer Rogal Dorn. The salvation of the XVI Legion came when one of its greatest captains, Ezekyle Abaddon, stepped forth and almost single-handedly re-organised the badly mauled Imperial forces into a Crusading force in order to prosecute a war of reciprocity against the hated Traitor Legions. Enraged at his Primarch's inability to protect the Emperor, he shunned his Legion's past and renamed them the Black Templars. Since that time, the Black Templars have been on the longest Crusade the Imperium of Man has ever known to prove their loyalty to the Emperor of Mankind. Legion History The Wolves of Terra In the time when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He raised new armies to fight His Great Crusade. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30th Millennium, from willing Terran volunteers like those who comprised the XVI Space Marine Legion who were implanted with the gene-seed of their missing Primarch Horus like all the Astartes of the First Founding. These recruits were also drawn in part from the Emperor's subjugated enemies, and together they represented the first generation of Space Marines. Like most of the embryonic Space Marine Legions, the XVI Legion drew all of its first recruits from the Terran population. Though it is difficult to be certain based on the existing Imperial records from this lost time, there are indications that many of the XVI Legion's early intake came from the hunter clans of the Jutigran Bowl and the Samsatian sub-plate slums. Perpetual conflict and the harshness of life on the desolate margins of Terran society had given these people the hard edge of ruthlessness and independence that would serve a Space Marine well. The XVI Legion made war with abrasive aggression. Perhaps through the influence of their genetic heritage or the use the Emperor put them to, the Space Marines of the XVI Legion became synonymous with sudden and overwhelming shock assaults. To the XVI Legion fell the swift prosecution of battle and the bloody termination of campaigns. Their attacks were preemptive as often as they were part of an existing conflict, their forces either the first deadly threat unleashed by the Imperium or preserved to enact a final, killing blow. The First Pacification of Luna was perhaps the most famous of these early victories for the XVI Legion, but the breaking of the Coriolis Enclaves and the Five Winter left scars in the collective consciousness of Terran society that persist even now. In the Capridian Sinks, it is still common for traders and gamblers to refer to the Legion's ancient number of sixteen as "the counting of the wolf". At some time the notion of the Emperor sending His "wolves" to break intractable or potential enemies took root in the consciousness of the new-born Imperium of Man, with the Pacification of Luna in the late 30th Millennium - considered by many the first battle of the Great Crusade - its apocryphal source. The XVI Legion embraced the epithet Luna Wolves they earned after this first campaign with relish. The wolf's head became a common icon for the Astartes of the XVI Legion, the link being somewhat abstract, as the Terran animals once called wolves had been almost extinct for millennia, largely relegated to existence as gene-stock for engineered bio-weapon beasts on Terra itself, though the name remained synonymous in most Terran dialects with controlled savagery. The wearing of pelts of such augmented canid predators increasingly marked out the field commanders and officers of the Luna Wolves. The XVI would not be the only Space Marine Legion to bear such a title and embrace this imagery as their own, but they were the first. Cthonia The Luna Wolves were the first Space Marine Legion to begin recruiting from another world beyond Terra. In this case, the new pool of Aspirants was found amongst the adolescent human males drawn from the violent hive city gangs inhabiting an ancient former Mining World that had devolved into a Feral World called Cthonia. Cthonia was located in one of Terra's closest neighbouring star systems in the Segmentum Solar and was within reach of spacecraft that could travel at only sublight velocities before the invention of the Warp-Drive. As a result, Cthonia had been colonised, built upon, tunnelled and mined since the dawn of human interstellar space travel millennia before the beginning of the Dark Age of Technology. Due to this unusually long period of exploitation by Mankind, all of the world's natural resources had been stripped away and used up centuries before, and the ancient mining technology had long since been rediscovered and removed by the Tech-adepts of Mars. The planet that remained was largely useless and abandoned, completely riddled with catacombs, crumbling industrial plant and exhausted mine-workings. Lupercal Horus, the true Primarch of the Luna Wolves, was the first of the Primarchs to be recovered by the Emperor, having been cast in his gestation capsule through the Warp much closer to Terra on Cthonia than the others by the Ruinous Powers, and he was found at a much younger age. Whereas the early history of many Primarchs is extensively if unevenly documented, the same cannot be said of Horus. Contradiction and omission tarnishes all accounts of Horus' formative years. It is clear that the Emperor did find Horus and also that he took command of the XVI Legion early in the Great Crusade. Beyond these manifest facts, agreement between the early Imperial sources is decidedly lacking, some even placing Horus on Cthonia as a foundling. Like many of his superhuman brethren, these sources say that the young Primarch thrived in Cthonia's harsh environment, learning his first lessons in war and killing from Cthonia's tech-barbarian kill-gangs. Another source claims that Horus returned to Terra itself. It is said that Horus grew at the Emperor's side, learning from his father even as they took back the Sol System and forged the alliances between the techno-barbarian nations of Terra and with the Mechanicus of Mars that created the Imperium of Man. Other highly creditable claims state that the Emperor found Horus, the first of His lost sons, but neither source specifies where, or the location of this finding. Surrounded in millennia of myths and allegory, the truth of Horus' origins will more than likely never be known. As a result, Horus was for many standard years the Emperor's only son, and there was a great affinity between them. The Emperor spent much time with His protege, teaching and encouraging him. Horus was soon placed in command of the XVIth Legion, which had already come to be known as the Luna Wolves -- 10,000 Astartes created from his own genetic code. With these superhuman warriors to lead, Horus accompanied the Emperor for the first thirty standard years of the Great Crusade that had begun in 798.M30, and together they forged the initial interstellar expansion of the young Imperium of Man. A Legion Reborn With the induction of the gene-stock from Cthonia, the XVI Legion was remade. For the Terran Space Marines who already constituted the core of the Legion, their new brothers brought with them their own customs, attitudes and modes of thought, the ingrained inheritances of a thousand generations of callous violence and the ruthless pursuit of survival that the indoctrination practices of that time could modify and perhaps suppress but not entirely erase, which was perhaps the point for the Cthonians' inclusion within the Legion. As the Terran Legionaries fell in battle, their voices and the more ordered military traditions they had been trained in became fewer and fainter within the XVI Legion. The marks of change were many and subtle, not overwriting the Legion's culture entirely but bringing a unique character to what had gone before. Examples of this change came slowly. The topknots and mohawks commonly sported by Cthonian ganger head-hunters became common throughout the ranks of the Luna Wolves as both additions to their armour and as personal decoration. After being wounded in battle by a worthy foe it was common for a Luna Wolf Astartes to honour the valour of his fallen enemy by making a deep scratch in the ceramite across his helm's eye socket. Perhaps most tellingly, the Cthonian word for cutting the throat of an enemy gang-killer in single combat - aebathan - became a common term in the ranks to describe the completion of a campaign. The personal charisma and reputation of a commander within the Legion came to apply to the Astartes under his command, as if the ways of the Cthonian gang lords now informed the Luna Wolves' own understanding of leadership. This applied particularly to the Luna Wolves' Primarch Horus after his rediscovery by the Emperor, as his cult of personality was universal within the Legion and all Luna Wolves came to revere the Lupercal almost to the extent that they revered the Emperor. The strength of the Luna Wolves in battle did not change or weaken after the inclusion of the Cthonians; if anything the Legion seemed to become even more potent over time. The Legion strove to maintain the required flexibility needed to allow them to fight any war or enemy they might encounter on their own terms, but where possible the application of sudden and overwhelming force was usually their favoured form of attack, and that of their Primarch. As a doctrine this became bound up with the Legion's savage ferocity that was born of Cthonian blood, and wielded with ferocious intelligence and the matchless tactical instinct of Horus. A star system targeted for Imperial Compliance would often fall to the Legion in a single engagement: Luna Wolves warships would cut in from the system's edge, forming a spear formation that would break into many smaller blade tips to strike at the target system's planets, moons and space stations. Orbital bombardment and simultaneous mass orbital drops would break the enemy's strength and will to resist. Tactical threats were systematically identified, isolated, outflanked, encircled and destroyed with merciless precision and close-quarter savagery which spoke of apex pack predators splitting a herd and gutting its members with lightning fury. The Imperial Army troops that followed in the Luna Wolves' wake often had little to do but scrape suddenly Compliant worlds clean of the leavings of battle. Triumph of Ullanor In the closing years of the thirty-first millennium, the Emperor's Great Crusade to reunite humanity under His banner was continuing apace. Vast expeditionary armies, spearheaded by His primarch sons, surged out across the galaxy, bringing enlightenment and compliance wherever they went. The greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories during the high point of the Great Crusade came in the form of the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered. The Ullanor Crusade was a vast Imperial assault on the Ork empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk. The capital world of this Greenskin stellar empire, and the site of the final assault by the Space Marine Legions, lay in the central Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Greenskins ever defeated by the military forces of the Imperium of Man. Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor, the Emperor of Mankind returned to Terra to begin work on His vast project to open up the Eldar Webway for Mankind's use. In His place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade He left Horus. In the aftermath of this Ullanor Crusade, Horus was granted the newly-created title of 'Warmaster', the commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies who possessed command authority over all of the other Primarchs and every Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade. Before returning to Terra to oversee the next phase of the creation of His stellar empire, the Emperor suggested to Horus that he rename the XVI Legion the 'Sons of Horus', in honour of their Primarch and to show his preeminent place amongst the other Primarchs. Horus initially declined this honour, not wishing to be set above his brothers, and so his Legion continued as the Luna Wolves for a little while longer. Some say that this event was where the seeds of disaffection were planted amongst the primarchs, with one of their number being so publicly elevated above the rest. In truth, the rot had started long before. Davin The Sons of Horus were redeployed to the feral world of Davin, a world that they had brought into Imperial Compliance sixty years earlier and was given to Eugen Temba, a former Imperial Army commander, as Planetary Governor to oversee the successful transition and rule. Somehow, Temba had been corrupted by the forces of the Lord of Decay and declared Davin's independence from the Imperium. During a battle against Chaos-spawned undead on Davin's moon, Warmaster Horus was struck down by a xenos blade dedicated to Nurgle known as a Kinebrach Anathame. During the battle with the corrupted Planetary Governor, Horus was wounded by the potent living metal of the Chaos blade he wielded, which left the Warmaster with a bleeding, toxic wound in his shoulder. This seemingly minor wound rapidly brought the Primarch to near-death, as his body was ravaged by an unknown contagion that his Legion's Apothecaries could not treat despite all the advanced technology at their disposal. During his recovery, Horus attended an initiation ceremony of one of Davin's primitive warrior lodges, after which the Warmaster's condition dramatically worsened to critical. That a primarch could succumb to any natural pathogen should have given a hint that what happened in the halls of the Knife of Bone involved the supernatural. It was in fact an act of possession by a powerful warp entity, although at the time the concept of the daemonic was widely regarded as errant superstition. Only with the aid of the psychic might of the blind Primarch of the Thousand Sons, and spiritual counselling from Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers, could the entity finally be cast out. So, with the Warmaster having escaped their snare, the Ruinous Powers turned their attentions elsewhere. The ordeal revealed to the Warmaster the true dangers of Chaos - a power so great that even he and his fellow primarchs were not immune to its corrupting touch. Horus was severely weakened by the events of Davin, and out of position to deal with what was to come. First, Curze of the Night Lords attacked Rogal Dorn, before going on the run with his legion. Worse still, word came from the galactic east that Guilliman had declared independence from the Imperium, claiming dominion over a massive region of space that he called 'Ultramar Segmentum'. Dornian Heresy When Horus had slipped from their clutches, the Ruinous Powers had moved to groom another for the role of Arch-Betrayer. True, they had been able to corrupt other primarchs, but Rogal Dorn was chosen for his potential to bring the entire Imperium crashing down. They preyed upon and magnified his feelings of jealousy at being passed over as Warmaster, and then being withdrawn to Terra while his brothers were carving a reputation across the galaxy. Feeling revulsion at such thoughts, Dorn had sought to drown out these shameful doubts of his father's judgement in the scourge of the Pain-Glove. As the pressure increased, he spent longer and longer in the device, until eventually it unhinged his mind, and he was claimed by the Pantheon of Chaos. He was not beholden to one, but to the glory of Chaos Undivided. The subsequent events of Isstvan revealed a third of the Legiones Astrates as traitors to the Emperor, with five loyal legions left either effectively destroyed, or entangled on the other side of the galaxy in an interminable conflict. With the news growing worse by the day, the remaining loyalist legions scrambled to get back to Terra, and to save the Emperor. The Siege of Terra As the Age of Darkness descended upon the Imperium, the veil of night had fallen and it would not be lifted within the lifetime of any condemned by the fates to live through it. As the fires of war caught, entire worlds burned. Between Isstvan in 006.M31 and the casting back of other Traitor campaigns, the Imperium knew anarchy, uncertainty and bloodshed on a scale never before witnessed. Soon, the Arch-Betrayer Dorn claimed world after world in the northern Imperium, and other spheres, systems and entire sectors across the galaxy declared for the Traitors' cause. Millions-strong armies reeled in disorder as desperate pleas for aid went unheeded. A torrent of orders flooded out from Terra with no notion of whether the intended recipients would receive them, or if they had already been slain or turned to the Arch-Betrayer's cause. Entire planetary populations fled across the stars, a migratory diaspora of refugees driven beyond sanity by the horrors unleashed by the rapidly advancing Traitor armies. Thus it proved nigh-impossible for Terra to mount a truly coordinated defence of its worlds and so sector after sector fell to the Arch-Betrayer as he advanced upon Terra. There was no single frontline that could be held and no decisive salient that could be mounted. Individual forces, from small companies to entire armies, threw themselves willingly into the crucible of war in a desperate effort to stem the inexorable tide. Never before had Mankind been divided by such conflict, and soon a thousand worlds and more were transformed into blasted war zones across which millions of erstwhile brothers-in-arms clashed. The galaxy was now in flames and the Emperor's vision for humanity laid in ruins. His former Praetorian, Rogal Dorn, had turned from service to the Imperium and embraced Chaos. His armies, the mighty and redoubtable Space Marines, were locked in a brutal civil war. After seven long years of bitter fighting, the Arch-Betrayer Dorn finally reached the Throneworld itself. Suffering and damnation awaited all should the Emperor fall and the war be lost. The end was nigh, as the skies darkened and colossal armies gathered. For the fate of Terra, for the fate of Mankind itself..the Siege of Terra had begun. With Dorn's Betrayal on Istvaan prematurely revealed, the Emperor and his Custodes were able to seal themselves off inside the Imperial throne-room complex. Dorn's intention had been to quietly dispose of the legions he could not corrupt, and then return to the palace before his treachery was discovered to deal with his father. Dorn, however, had allowed for this eventuality. As the Emperor's Praetorian, a portion of his legion garrisoned the Imperial Palace, and when the time came, guards became jailers, trapping the Emperor and His Legio Custodes within the armoured bunker of the Imperial throne-room. Dorn's grip upon Terra was tightened as, according to his plan, the Blood Angels fleet broke from the warp. What emerged from the landing craft at the Eternity Wall spaceport were not the proud, red-armoured sons of Baal, but gaunt, diseased creatures, who fell upon the terrified defenders to feast upon their blood. The legion had fallen prey to some form of malady that first rotted their blood, forcing them to take fresh stocks from unwilling victims, and in the process ate away at their sanity and loyalty to the Emperor. A ray of hope came for the embattled defenders as the mercurial Night Lords appeared from nowhere. Nothing had been heard from the legion since their Primarch, Konrad Curze, had physically attacked Dorn and taken his followers into hiding. Once more, Night Lord fought Imperial Fist, but this time the reason for it was clear. Characteristic of the Night Haunter‟s favoured tactics, the battle through the Imperial Palace was brutal and swift. Then, without warning, they withdrew to take the fight elsewhere across Terra. This respite was short-lived, though, as within days the Arch-Betrayer, Dorn, arrived back from Istvaan in force, along with the Salamanders. The Iron Hands moved to secure Mars for the rebellion, silencing all word from the Adeptus Mechanicus and their Titan Legions. Shortly after, the fleets of the Sons of Horus and the Iron Warriors battered their way through the blockade to make planet-fall, before encircling the Imperial Palace in a counter-siege. This forced the Imperial Fists to defend the outer walls of the palace at the same time that they tried to break into the heavily fortified throne-room. The combination of the Warmaster's cold fury and Perturabo's siege-craft slowed Dorn's progress towards the Emperor. The siege continued to grind on for nearly two more months. Despite strenuous assertions from Horus that He must leave Terra, the Emperor flatly refused. He had spent the whole of his long lifetime battling to unite Terra and mankind, and had fought at the forefront of the Great Crusade. He would not be driven away from His own planet. They, beyond all expectation, things went from bad to worse as another Traitor Legion arrived to join the fray - the Slaanesh-corrupted White Scars. With another fresh legion throwing its weight behind the traitors, and the fleets of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves only days away, the Emperor had no choice but to cut out the Heresy at its source. He and his finest troops prepared to board the Phalanx and destroy the Arch-Betrayer, Dorn, on his own command vessel, The Phalanx. The Emperor, flanked by his Custodians, and Horus along with his Mournival of captains teleported onto the ship, but were scattered across the vast command decks by sinister magicks. Called by the psychic presence of the Emperor, the loyalists fought their way back to their leader. Horus reached the Emperor just outside of Dorn's personal Sanctum, to find the primarch's Terminator armour-clad guards dead, and the armoured doorway already open. A wail of unutterable anguish echoed from the chamber beyond. The pair ventured inside and found the room a wreck. Fine tapestries had been ripped from the walls, and Dorn was smashing the complex mechanisms of his Pain-Glove with the sheared adamantium haft of his personal standard – the banner awarded to him by the Emperor. The pair advanced, ready for the kill, but Horus recognised the look in his brother's eyes from his time just after the possession on Davin and urgently waved his father back. Dorn mumbled that he had been freed - that the pulse from the Astronomicon had given him enough strength to finally banish the daemon. He said that he had killed his corrupted bodyguards and retreated to the Pain-Glove to atone for his sins. Empathising with Dorn, the Warmaster put aside his weapons and advanced, open-handed in friendship, to embrace his returned brother. More wary than Horus, the Emperor hung back, and as though compelled by some unexplained urge, kicked aside a fallen tapestry to reveal the brutalised corpse of Konrad Curze. With his deception revealed, Dorn raised the broken standard pole and plunged it deep into Horus' chest. The Warmaster died, never realising that he had been betrayed a second time. Spurred into action, the Emperor leapt at Dorn. The room had seen the deaths of two of his sons, and He hardened his heart to cause a third. Dorn, though, had been endowed with all the gifts of the Ruinous Powers, and was a match for even the Master of Mankind. The two battled for what seemed like an age, but when the Mournival, led by First Captain Abaddon, reached the devastated site of the battle, they found both of them broken, burned and shattered beyond aid. Dorn's Heresy had been ended, but doing so had claimed the Emperor's mortal life. All that remained was an echo of His spirit that had been bound to the Astronomicon. It bade Abaddon to reclaim the bodies of the Emperor and His loyal sons, and to re-unite the physical shell with what remained of His immortal soul. They fought their way off the ship with cold fury, and after that the Phalanx, under the command of Sigismund, stayed in orbit just long enough to collect the remaining Imperial Fists. The coalition of traitors fractured, and then scattered, with the Blood Angels, Salamanders and White Scars commandeering whatever vessels they could to escape. The Dark Angel fleet turned from its Terran course, and even the blood-crazed berserkers of the Space Wolves faltered, before falling to fighting amongst themselves. The Bitter Harvest: Post-Heresy to M41 "Horus was weak. Horus was a fool. He stayed his hand and allowed the Arch-Betrayer to cripple the Emperor. If he had survived I would have executed him myself." "We are no longer the Sons of Horus. Neither are we the Luna Wolves. That is the past, we are the future, and must crusade to take back what was lost, and to destroy the traitors. From this day forth, we are the Black Templars. - Legion Master Abaddon, First High Lord of Terra The Emperor was brought to the Astronomican, where His shattered, lifeless, flesh was integrated with the psychic machinery of the beacon, and fed and nourished with a thousand souls a day to sustain His wavering life-force. The Long War to drive the Traitors from the Imperium could then begin. The Heresy had been averted, but amongst the many casualties had been the Imperium's Manifest Destiny to rule the galaxy. The Emperor's vision of a Great Crusade was but a memory, and although the eight Traitor Legions had failed to claim Terra, they were far from defeated: Guilliman's secessionist Ultramar Segmentum was only the largest and most organised of the rebellious realms. With the Emperor hovering as a ghost in the machine, the Warmaster and most of the loyal primarchs scythed away, it was Abaddon who stepped forward and became de facto leader of the Imperium. Hating his primarch for not protecting the Emperor, he first reorganised, and then re-named his legion to shun their past, and to reflect their crusading future. Thus, the Black Templars were born, and just as the Warmaster had done before him, Abaddon proved supremely adept at manipulating the disparate parts of the shattered Imperium back to some semblance of order. Accepting the numerical weakness of the Legiones Astartes at that time, and the vast numbers of threats and enemies they faced, Abaddon made the Black Templars the core of an overwhelming force composed of as many legions as possible. The idea was to prevent the legions becoming isolated, both so that they would not be destroyed piecemeal, and that they would watch over one another to prevent any further legions falling to the Ruinous Powers. Initially there was resistance to such a cautious approach, especially from legions whose primarchs had survived. However, the tragic fate of the isolated Raven Guard, and the grievous losses the Iron Warriors sustained trying to dislodge the Imperial Fists from their Iron Cage worlds reinforced the wisdom of Abaddon's proposals. Soon he was able to command the fealty of the surviving primarchs, and played on their individual preferences and prejudices. For instance, Mortarion would commit to a force to drive the Space Wolves from Fenris proposed by Magnus, on the understanding that reciprocity would be observed when it came to mounting a xenocidal crusade against an Aeldari Craftworld. For Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children, an attack on Guilliman deep inside Ultramar Segmentum in revenge for Isstvan was the prize, and Lorgar was pacified with leadership of the newly formed Ecclesiarchy and support for his legion's Wars of Faith. Painfully slowly, but surely, the tide turned and the borders of Imperial-controlled space rolled back once again. In the course of a long lifetime, Abaddon saw his patience rewarded. The remaining loyalist legions were rebuilt and expanded, and the Traitor Legions were pushed from their homeworlds and enclaves towards the massive warp-rift which became known as the Eye of Terror. He died as he lived; leading the Imperial forces from the front. On the world of Uralan, in the shadow of a monumental tower, Abaddon was struck down by a huge golden-skinned creature bearing an enormous blade of warp-construction. The first High Lord of Terra was dead, but his philosophy would live on. Legion Organisation Pre-Heresy Legion Command Hierarchy Specialist Ranks and Formations Post-Heresy The Crusades Specialist Ranks Specialist Formations Legion Recruitment Neophytes Initiates Scout Squads Legion Combat Doctrine Legion Beliefs Notable Black Templars Pre-Heresy Post-Heresy Legion Fleet Legion Appearance Legion Colours Pre-Heresy Post-Heresy Legion Badge Gallery Category:B Category:First Founding Category:Imperium Category:Loyalists Category:Space Marine Legions